Wikis / Mona Jozi
Wikis ''' ''' If you want to find the most important site on the Web these days, look nofurther than Wikipedia.org (see Figure 4. I). As its name suggests,Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, one that really is attempting to store the "sumof human knowledge." By the time you read this, the English version ofWikipedia will house over 3 million separate entries with information abouteverything from the Aaadonta (a type of slug) to Zzzax (a fictional super villainfrom Marvel Comics). Every day, new entries are being added aboutpeople, places, things, historical events, and even today's news almost as ithappens. It's truly an amazing resource.But whereas most people get the "pedia" part of the name, only a fewreally understand the first part, the "wiki." And believe it or not, that's themost important part, because without the wiki, this encyclopedia, this growingrepository of all we know and do, could not exist. The word wiki is a shortform of the Hawaiian wiki-wiki, which means "quick." Ward Cunninghamcreated the first wiki in 1995, who was looking to design an easy authoringtool that might spur people to publish. And the key word here is "easy,"because, plainly put, a wiki is a Web site where anyone can edit anything anytimethey want.So, have some knowledge about your favorite hobby that isn't onWikipedia? Add it. Read something you think isn't correct? Fix it. Don't likethe way one of the entries is written? Erase it. Something big just happen in thenews that is history making? Start a new entry. You have the power, becauseevery time you access Wikipedia, or most any other wiki for that matter, youdo so as editor in chief. And it's that freedom that has made Wikipedia the phenomenonit is as tens of thousands of editors in chief, people just like you andme, take on the job of collecting the sum of all human knowledge.Most everyone's first reaction to that is that it sounds more likeWhackypedia. "If anyone can edit anything on the site any time they want,how in the world can you trust what you read there?" they ask. It's a greatquestion. The answer is that, thankfully, there are vastly more editors whowant to make it right than those who want to make it wrong. When mistakesoccur or vandals strike, the collaborative efforts of the group set it straight,usually very quickly. University of Buffalo professor Alex Halavais testedthis by creating 1 3 errors on various posts on Wikipedia, all of which werefixed within a couple of hours (Halavais, 2004). Pretty amazing, I'd say.Now, I know what you're thinking, something along the lines of "Well, Ican skip this chapter, , cause this anyone-can-do-anything wiki thing willnever work in my school." But, try t o resist the urge; wikis can b e prettyamazing and versatile. And if you believe as I do that doing real collaborationis something that every student needs to learn, keep reading.Take, for example, the Wikipedia entry created around the Indian Oceanearthquake that struck just after Christmas 2004 and created the tsunami thatkilled more than 175,000 people. It may have happened over five years agonow, but it was without question the event that made clear to me that we wereliving in a much different information world as I turned to Wikipedia towatch the event unfold. The earthquake occurred just after midnight (GMT)on December 26, and the first 76-word post was created at Wikipedia aboutnine hours later. Twenty-four hours after the first mention, the entry had beenedited more than 400 times and had grown to about 3,000 words, completewith some of the first photographs of the devastation, a chart documentingthe dead and injured, and other graphics describing how the tsunami wasspawned.Forty-eight hours after the first post, the entry had grown to more than6,500 words, had been edited 1 ,200 times, and contained more than a dozengraphics including video of the wave itself. Six months after the event, morethan 7,000 changes had been recorded, and the post had settled at around7,200 words. All of it had been created and re-created by people just like youand me who were interested in contributing what they were finding to theentry. It was without question the most comprehensive resource on the Webabout that horrific event. And that process is being repeated over and over asnews happens around us. It's how each of Wikipedia's millions of entries inover 200 languages have evolved-from the hands of people just like us withthe concept that everyone together is smarter than anyone alone. In theprocess, we check facts, provide "soft" security by acting like a communitywatchdog, and weed out bias and emotion from the posts in an attempt toarrive at a neutral point of view for each article. Each entry is the group's besteffort, not any one person's.In that way, Wikipedia is the poster child for the collaborative constructionof knowledge and truth that the new, interactive Web facilitates. It is, tome at least, one of the main reasons I believe in the transformative potentialof all of these technologies. No one person, or even small group of people,could produce Wikipedia, as currently edits appear at a rate of around400,000 a day. Every day, thousands of people who have no connection toone another engage in the purposeful work of negotiating and creating truth.They do this with no expectation that their contributions will be in some wayacknowledged or compensated, and they do it with the understanding thatwhat they contribute can be freely edited or modified or reused by anyoneelse for any purpose. The extent to which this happens and to which it is successfulis truly inspiring.THE CHALLENGE OF WIKIPEDIA IN SCHOOLS Before we talk about building our own wikis with students, a couple of morethoughts on Wikipedia. Already, students are turning to Wikipedia as aresource for research, much to the chagrin of many teachers and librarians.As we've already discussed with blogs, knowing what sources to trust isbecoming a much more labor-intensive exercise, and wikis, with many oftenanonymous authors, make that even more difficult. The idea that "it might bewrong" is a tough one for most people to overcome. Yet Steve Jobs, the CEOof Apple, has called Wikipedia one of the most accurate encyclopedias in theworld (tinyurl.com/33uqlh). What to do?For one, teachers should spend some time checking Wikipedia's accuracyon their own. If your experience is anything like mine has been, you mayend up agreeing with Jobs. But this stiJI takes a faith that we didn't need inthe days before the interactive Web, a faith that collectively we can produceinformation that is as high quality as what a trusted few produced in the past.It's a tough call. The early consensus among educators seems to be to tellstudents to use Wikipedia as a starting point for their work, but not as a soleresource.The additional challenge with Wikipedia is that each of its entries is, infact, a collaboratively written research report. It's not exposition in the sensethat the entries are defending a thesis-just the opposite, in fact. Wikipedia'swhole intention is to foster a neutral point of view in every entry. But say youassign students to do reports on a specific country-Argentina, for instance.All the pertinent reporting about Argentina may have already been done andcollected at Wikipedia. So in this case, is it more important for a student tobe able to find that information and know how to evaluate it, or to know howto repeat work that's already been done? Again, it's a tough call.A final challenge is changing the way we think about the content ourown students create. Should we be encouraging them to contribute what theylearn and know to the Wikipedia entry on that topic? Think about it. [f yourstudent produces a great research paper on global warming, why shouldn'tshe add what she found to the global warming entry at Wikipedia? And whyshouldn't we watch together to see what happens to that information that sheadds? If it gets modified, we can think critically about those modifications.[f it gets spammed (which is highly unlikely) we can come to the rescue.Either way, it can be a great learning experience. (And by the way, foryounger kids, they could edit or add their work to Simple English Wikipediaat Simple.Wikipedia.org.)If we begin to look at Wikipedia as another opportunity for our studentsto contribute what they learn and know to a larger audience, [ think we canbegin to appreciate it for the really incredible site that it is.WIKIS IN SCHOOLS So what about it? Are you ready to begin thinking about how a wiki mightwork in your classroom? Hopefully, despite the seemingly chaotic design ofwikis, you're starting to imagine the possibilities here. So, before taking alook at the ways in which some forward-thinking . teachers have he en usingwikis in their classrooms, let's talk about some of the more obvious concerns.Namely, what would stop someone from anonymously going onto a class-runwiki and vandalizing it by erasing content or by adding profanities, forinstance? There is no doubt that teachers on the K-12 levels are going to behard pressed to justifY the use of such an open venue for the publication ofstudent work. However, a s we'll see, there are some who are doing just that.In theory, the "soft security" model could work in schools as well. If it's usedas a group collaboration site it la Wikipedia, the class as a whole could monitorthe content that is added and make the necessary edits and revisions.Giving students editorial control can imbue in them a sense of responsibilityand ownership for the site and minimize the risk of someone adding somethingoffensive. In fact, wiki projects in schools have worked best when theteacher loosens the reins a bit and lets students manage the content on the site.As much as we'd like to trust our students to make good things happen,however, we all know that it would only take one parent to open the wiki andfind something inappropriate to derail the project. The good news is thatthere are alternatives. Although wiki purists scoff at the idea, there are anumber of Web-based wiki sites that feature a password and login systemsimilar to Weblogs for people to interact with the site. Or, similar softwarecan be installed on your server and run locally. It's still a much more openand collaborative environment once inside, but in this way you can restrictwho can and cannot access the site.Wikis pose some pedagogical challenges as well. They can be so effectiveat fostering collaboration that the teacher really needs to carefully examineher role in their use. As I noted previously, early implementations of wikis ineducational settings have shown that the more autonomy teachers give tostudents in terms of negotiating the scope and quality of the content they arecreating, the better. It's a very democratic process of knowledge creation. Inusing wikis, students are not only learning how to publish content; they arealso learning how to develop and use all sorts of collaborative skills, negotiatingwith others to agree on correctness, meaning, relevance, and more. Inessence, students begin to teach each other. Teachers who impose a lot of rightand wrong on that process can undermine the effectiveness of the tool. (Forfurther discussion of the pedagogical potentials see tinyurl.com!2zu6fb.)And remember, if the openness of wikis feels a bit too disruptive, wikiscan be used in many other contexts inside schools as well. As we'll see, theycan be used as collaborative tools among teachers or districts to collect andshare information.EXAMPLES OF WIKIS IN K-1 2 EDUCATION Among the teachers using wikis in schools, few have done more than VickiDavis at Westwood High in Camilla, Georgia. Her computer classes use theWestwood.Wikispaces.com site to complete many of their projects and as aportal for assignments and relevant links to many other sources. But evenmore, Vicki has started to use wikis to connect her students to other learnersfrom around the world, and her "Flat Classroom" project wiki from 2007(flatclassroomproject.wikispaces.com) and her Horizon Project from 2008(tinyurl.coml2knznm) are great examples.The first title comes from Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat and theidea was to have her students study some of the "flatteners" that Friedmandescribes in terms of how they play out not only in their local lives in Georgiabut for students in other parts of the globe. So she connected with JulieLindsay, a teacher then in Bangladesh, and together they connected theirstudents for a two-week investigation, the results of which are reported in thewiki. As you dig through the site, you'll find a comprehensive collection ofnarratives and essays, audio, and video-all produced collaboratively byteams of kids from disparate geographies. It's really good stuff.And when you see it, you'll also see why a wiki makes perfect sense fordelivering this kind of work. The students worked together in the same environment.They could edit and add to each other's work seamlessly. The pageswere easy to build and grow. And best of all, it's an environment that is easyto share with large audiences. Pretty cool.Or, take a look at Louise Maine's wiki work at her school in Punxsutawney,Pennsylvania. She and her freshman biology students are tracking their workfrom class, sharing links, posting results to experiments, and basically buildinga text for their course (tinyurl.comlnr9 l yr). More importantly, herstudents are learning the literacies of collaboratively constructing content asthey work with her to add value to the site. While only her students can editit, the wiki is open for anyone in the world to view.WIKI TOOLS FOR SCHOOLSIf you want to give wikis a try in your classroom, you may want to start at theWikispaces.com site. (After playing here for a bit to getyour feet wet, you may want to think about trying Wetpaint.com as welL) Atthis writing, they have given away over 1 80,000 ad-free wikis to educators, andyou can follow this link to get your own: tinyurLcoml293h9a. As you can tellfrom most of the examples above, Wikispaces is already pretty popular withclassroom teachers, though there are some alternatives we'll discuss later. Creating your wiki is as easy as filling in the form on the page linkedabove, a process that takes maybe 45 seconds if you're a fast typist. (Aminute if not.) Enter a username, a password, and a working e-mail address,click the "yes" button to make a wiki, give your wiki a name (no spacesallowed, by the way), select the type of wiki you want (most educators pick"protected" to start), click the box to certify that you're using it for educationalpurposes, and you're up and running. All you need to do is click the"Edit This Page" icon when your wiki site appears and you can start creatingthe content on your site.Using the editing toolbar, you can do some basic formatting of your text,This message has been truncatedShow Full Message